


Diamonds and Rust

by KumikoIshida



Category: Slam Dunk
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 15:23:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14499933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KumikoIshida/pseuds/KumikoIshida
Summary: Shohoku just defeated Ryonan, and the guys are out to celebrate.In a karaoke pub.What seemed like a boring night, slowly takes Hanamichi to realize a shocking truth...





	Diamonds and Rust

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Hello everyone!  
> This is my very first RuHana fic, the first with two boys, the first written in English (wow, a lot of first times!) so please be kind! If you notice any error feel free to tell me, since I'm not motherlanguage I'm not quite sure I got everything right...  
> Ok, so to sum it up this event takes place after the victory against Ryonan; the song is “Diamonds and Rust” as sung by Blackmore's Night (I know the original version in Joan Baez's, but I like this one better). Some of the lyrics have been twisted a little to fit the story, and anyway no one is expecting Hana to be able to understand English completely, right?  
> Have a good read and, if you like it, please let me know!  
> XOXO  
> Kumi

A big idea.

A big shitty idea.

To celebrate their victory against the Ryonan team, all the Shohoku boys had decided to go out and drink in a pub where a friend of Mitsui worked: he had guaranteed not to ask the age of who was ordering alcohol.

Such a shame it was a karaoke pub.

Hanamichi couldn't help a moan of suffering at the vain trial by the idiot on the stage to sing “Don't Stop Me Now”. He couldn't have been able to sing “Pop! Goes the Weasel” and now he sounded like a coyote with a really bad hoarseness while destroying a song by Queen. Queen, for fuck's sake!

No, there really wasn't enough alcohol in the world for him to tolerate that rubbish. Luckily, his team mates were loud enough to partially suffocate the noise. Well, apart from Rukawa, but Rukawa was a peculiar case.

-Nh.- the mentioned fox puffed, sitting at Hanamichi's left side.

Here, another downside of the night! At Hanamichi's right was Miyagi, but he was totally wasted and couldn't provide any company, since he was babbling, with his buttock only half-laid on the chair.

Possessed by a mortal bore, that the beer had relieved only for the first five minutes of newness, Hanamichy looked at Rukawa raising an eyebrow. If he'd replied, good thing, otherwise good thing anyway.

-Queen should be banned at the karaoke.- Rukawa puffed, with an angry stare.

-Freddie Mercury is revolving in his own grave.- Hanamichi agreed. He took another sip of beer and his rage lever reached a critical point: he was willing to get along with the fox, for the love of Coach Anzai, but did it have to be about Queen? He loved Queen, and now he had to stand knowing that that arrogant prick liked them too.

Finally, the torture was over, and Miyagi got up to cheer loudly. Hanamichi yelled: -What the hell are you cheering at, Pigmy? He was shit!

-I'm glad it's over!- Miyagi screamed. The whole pub heard him, and even the girl that was walking the stage for her turn laughed out loud.

The karaoke machine began with some guitar chords. Hanamichi didn't recognise the song, with relief: another good song ruined by an idiot would have been the straw that break the camel. The girl on the stage looked towards the Shohoku's table, and her stare predictably landed upon Rukawa. She nodded towards him

“Another hopeless bitch”, Hanamichi thought, but with one eye he saw Rukawa raising carelessly an arm to answer the salute.

-Miyagi.- Rukawa said. His tone was low, but the warm inflection of his voice was able to catch his mate's attention.

-Yeah?- Miyagi asked, his stare a bit out of focus, but his brain still functioning enough to realize that Rukawa talking of his own will was a unique event. Hanamichi bent backwards to avoid any phisical contact, while his nemesis reached out in front of him to say: -If you mock her too, I'll break your bones.- Even if Haruko was at the opposite end of the table, Hanamichi nearly heard her heart breaking. He was about to crush Rukawa's skull against the dirty side of the table as a righteous avenge, when two things happened. First, Rukawa added something to his claim (he really was a blabbermouth tonight, wasn't he?): -She's my cousin.

The second thing that happened was that said cousin began to sing. An unpredictably warm voice came out of the tiny human on the stage, forcing the whole pub to shut up.

 

“ _Well, I'd be damned, here comes your ghost again,_

_but that's not unusual, it's just that the moon is full and you happened to call.”_

 

Rukawa righted himself and took a sip from that faggot cocktail he had ordered, a vodka something. Hanamichi didn't quite notice. His gaze was captured by the girl on the stage, who was a smaller version of his enemy ; her voice had compelled silence in a few verses, so that even Miyagi had shut up, and who was sitting with his back to the stage had turned to look at her.

 

“ _And here I sit, my hand on the telephone,_

_hearing a voice I'd known a couple of light-years ago,_

_heading straight for the fall.”_

 

She was so expressive, she put all her soul in that song, a small diamond in the crowd of the tune-deaf sleazeballs that had encroached the microphon and raped everyone's ears.

 

“ _As I remember, your eyes were bluer than robin's eggs,_

_and my poetry was lousy, you said._

_Where are you calling from? A booth in the Midwest”_

 

Eyes bluer than robin's eggs, Hanamichi held his breath. A pair of eyes appeared in his mind, intrusive, unwanted. His hand shook around the glass, so much that a few droplets of beer froth on the table and on his arm, even if he had drunk more than half his pint.

Because they weren't Haruko's eyes.

They weren't the eyes of any of the other fifty girls that had dumped him.

They werent a girl's eyes, in fact.

They were Rukawa's eyes, who so many times had pierced him, followed by a few words of scorn.

 

“ _Ten years ago, I bought you some cufflinks,_

_oh and you brought me something,_

_we both know what memories can bring...”_

 

Rukawa's cousin's voice (Rukawa, Rukawa, always that damn fox, not even his siblings are losers or unattractive or incompetent, what the hell!) broke a little on the second verse, filling Hanamichi's heart with the very same bitterness that had clearly caused the author to write them. Suddenly, he realized that Rukawa's loathing hit him more than deeply.

 

“ _...they bring diamonds and rust.”_

 

Rust. Rust like the colour of the hair he had cut after the defeat against the Kainan team.

Rust like he felt after receiving one of Rukawa's stone cold comments.

He looked at him with one eye during a brief music part, and he met his eyes, his “bluer than robin's eggs” eyes, staring at him in an icy gaze. Rukawa didn't lower his glare, forcing Hanamichi to another retreat, the further defeat. His cheeks were flaring, and for a moment he was glad to be surrounded by gloom, he who loved the sun and the light.

He firmly turned his gaze towards the girl on the stage (what was it, a family of beauties? Did she have too look that much like him? It was like being in a sadistic room of mirrors of the funfair!) and he waited for his cheeks to stop being red like roses.

 

“ _Well you burst on the scene, already a legend,_

_the unwashed phenomenon,_

_the original vagabond,_

_straight into my heart.”_

 

Hanamichi shivered. That song seemed to be written for him, for the fox, that damn fox. “Straight into my heart”. Straight... no. No, hell, no.

 

“ _And there you stayed,_

_temporarily lost at scene...”_

 

And now, why was he picturing him collapsing on the bench after scoring that whole bunch of shots against Kainan? He had hated him now, he had thought it was the righteous punishment for having dared to shade the Basketball Genius, but there was also a bit of... concern, wasn't there?

 

“ _The Madonna was yours for free,_

_yes the girl on the half-shell_

_would keep you unharmed”_

 

Those verses made him think of Haruko. The little, beautiful, sweet Haruko, who would throw herself under a running train for Rukawa... but, surprisingly, he didn't feel anything, not a bit of jealousy. Just a certain bitterness. He stopped looking at the girl on the stage to watch Haruko, longing for that flint of the heart that had always followed his relationship with her. He watched her, drank her image, and he felt that out-of-rythm beat of the heart... but only when Rukawa's knee accidentally touched his thigh, making him suddenly conscious of sitting a few inches from him. Hanamichi felt the whole left side of his body growing hot, and the skin under his hair iced. He couldn't be in l... no, he didn't even want to think the whole sentence.

 

“ _Now I see you standing with leaves falling around_

_and snow in your hair...”_

 

He wasn't picturing himself strolling, in autumn and then in winter, hand in hand with Kaede Rukawa, of couse he wasn't!

 

“ _Now you're smiling at the window of that hotel over Washington square”_

 

Ok, he was. Since tomorrow, we give up on beer. The girl's voice tensed in a low whisper to escort the following verse:

 

“ _Our breath comes out white clouds_

_and mingles and hangs in the air”_

 

To mingle, two breaths must be really close. The sensation of ice spreaded from Hanamichi's head to his face, neck and shoulders; his imagination was running so fast that he nearly phisically perceived a hot breath on his lips. He wondered how it would have been to stare so closely into those damn fox's blue eyes, and seeing something in them that wasn't scorn.

 

“ _Speaking strictly for me,_

_we both could have died then and there”_

 

To die, to perish right away, not to have to live with the knowledge of being in love with another boy, more, being in love with Kaede “baka kitsune” Rukawa, oh fuck, he had thought it for real, to die, to perish right away, now that was a good idea!

 

“ _Now you're telling me_

_you're not nostalgic,_

_well then give me another word for it,_

_you were always so good with words,_

_and at keeping things vague.”_

 

Oh, finally something that didn't have anything to do with Rukawa! Good with words.. hn! He barely spoke! But his words were always sharp as blades, weren't they? Always pointy, alwais straight to the heart; in fact yes, he was indeed good with words. And the rare compliments were so evanescent that they seemed like wispers in the wind. “Sorry about that shot. It's such a shame, with your abilities.” now only Hanamichi realized that it wasn't scorn but a praise.

 

“ _Cause I need some of that vagueness now,_

_it's all coming back too clearly,_

_oh, I love you dearly!”_

 

Hanamichi had to resist the nearly unstoppable temptation to smash his hands on his face and moan like an idiot girl. He placed both elbows on the table and grabbed the glass with two hands, he spread his legs and firmly put his feet on the floor, like he was in search for a stable support now that the world was sliding away, melting in the glacial stare of a damn, arrogant, egocentric fox.

 

“ _And if you're offering me diamonds and rust,_

_I've already paid!”_

 

The girl's voice reached its climax on the last verse of the song, and her words, like those, rare and stabbing, of his handsome cousin, hit Hanamichi so hard that his heart nearly fell into pieces in his chest, and his breath died, and he felt his head spinning so much that he had to back up and lean on the chair's back. Because, what kind of hope did he think he had with that fox? Kaede Rukawa, the man of ice, who with a single clap of hands would have had all the girls from Kanagawa at his feet, Haruko first. He who had never gave reason to suspect that he had any interest to the fairer sex, or to sex in general, or to anything that wasn't basketball or himself.

Well, none. “None” was the answer. But at least, no Heisman would have come, because Hanamichi would never ever lower himself to claim his love. Never. Ever. It would've had to rain frogs and snow trouts.

Applauses, roaring, began while the girl was still singing on the ending of the song, repeating _“Diamonds and rust”_ in a lower and flebile voice, but Hanamichi couldn't bring himself to beat his hands. He had the clear sensation that he would have fallen like a ready pear if he had removed his hands from the dirty, sticky surface of the table, where he had put them so firmly that his knuckles had turned white.

And then a light, delicate touch, a warm hand on his thight, right above the knee. Kaede Rukawa's pale hand, the one that had slammed in the basket uncountable balls.

-Everything's alright, Hanamichi?- a whisper, nearly udible in the roar of applause, his name pronounced for the first time by Rukawa's voice and (oh, my God) wasn't it so beautiful if said by him and (oh, my God) why did it have to happen to him?

Hanamichi frantically searched to find a bit of exuberance, some aggressivity (“Take that hand off me, you dick kisser!” or “Of course I am, a Genius like me is always at the top!”), and with horror he saw his own left hand leaving the table. He watched it move as it was a stranger's and he watched it land upon Rukawa's.

-Yes.- He heard himself answering with a low voice, -Yes, I think I'm ok.- he tasted the contact with that hand, smaller than his own but muscular, unsuspectably warm, so much that he could feel his leg burning.

Alright, now Rukawa would have beaten him up to death. And he would have let him do without a single sound, or maybe with a small faint of gratitude. But Rukawa didn't shrink back.

-What about you?- Hanamichi asked. And what was it, what was painting the beautiful brown-haired boy under his jaunty bangs? And those eyes (bluer than robin's eggs), they weren't full of disdain, but... no, Hanamichi just couldn't hope it.

-I'm great.- Rukawa answered. His hand lingered on Hanamichi's thigh just enough to give him a little squeeze, almost impercetible, then left kindly while the handsome fox turned to take another sip of his cocktail.

But, before his lips curled around the straw, Hanamichi was certain he had seen them ripple in a smile.

 

 


End file.
